Whither Language?

I'm no Henry Higgins, or any sort of student of language, but I have been wondering lately what the English (or American) language will sound like in a hundred years. I recently got a Twitter account, which is an amusing little service (though of minimal use to me personally, some, like Gary Vaynerchuk, seem to be using it to great effect). The thing about Twitter is that one is limited to messages of 140 characters.

That got me thinking about the other pressures we have to compress our messages into the fewest words. Cell phone text messages are similarly limited; TV sound bites force public figures to over simplify their message; and the sheer volume of information available to people on the web reward those able to get their point across quickly and efficiently, if not comprehensively.

So, what does that mean for language structure? Our language patterns obviously change fairly rapidly, and to a more significant extent than just the shift in popular slang. Backed up by no research whatsoever, it seems to me that 50 to 75 years is about the length of time it takes for significant style changes to occur. Movie dialogue and political speeches from the 40s and 50s is decidedly different than today, to say nothing of the 1860s or 1770s.

It seems that the pressures of information flow will force us to strip language down to its bear bones, ensuring the essential meaning is communicated quickly as one may not have the opportunity to get further. Americans in general have the reputation of going straight at the heart of a topic, compared to other cultures who approach issues more leisurely. It may be that those cultures may have more of a language adjustment in the near term than we will. (a sampling of the latest Twitter messages often reveals at least a couple posts in Japanese and Chinese, and sometimes in languages I don't even recognize)

In all, I hope that we will find some sort of balance between the need to quickly share information with the benefits of being able to fully explain context, and the beauty of well written or well spoken words.



P.S.- For those disappointed in my lack of posting lately, I would like to highlight the "no periodicity" clause of my blog introduction. Sure, I'd like to be inspired more often, but such is life.